If it weren't so serious, we could all sit back, laugh, and shake a finger at all the warmongers who were chomping at the bit to go after Saddam and those WMD's. We could all crow, "I told you so," if it weren't so serious.
We could smile, nod our heads, and raise our eyebrows when Bush took the largest budget surplus in history and doled it out in a few hundred dollars here and there, never considering that something might, just might happen that would cause us to need that surplus, if it weren't so serious.
We could cluck our tongues at all those who have waged a war on science and have declared that this warming trend was just part of the cycle, and that it certainly wasn't caused by man, if it weren't so serious.
We could just tsk-tsk at the idea that it was just fine to invade our privacy by listening in on our phone calls, following our computer journeys, looking at our bank accounts, all in the name of national security, mind you, if it weren't so serious.
We could just roll our eyes and say, "That's just the way they work," when one Congressman after another is investigated and/or indicted for their involvement in corruption with the lobbyists, selling out our interests, if it were not so serious.
We could just shake our heads at the latest shenanigans of the right-wing pundits/shills who come out with their outrageous lies that never seem to be challenged by their people, who should know better, if it were not so serious.
We could just laugh at a Congress who has frittered away a year of sessions by spending the allotted time in chasing after one ridiculous, useless religious right hot-button issue after another, if it weren't a matter of life and death.
Instead we wail and we cry and we moan at the utter insanity of what is going on in this country. We feel such complete dismay at the direction in which we are headed. We blog and blog, but we are preaching to the choir. We must find ways to wake up the sleepers who feel that one vote more or less won't make a difference. We must find ways to press the urgency of the situation. We must have a Connecticut in every state.
But it is serious, deadly serious.
No one will be smiling when everyone is walking around with respirators because the air can't be breathed, when a trip to the ocean will entail a drive to Tennessee, Oklahoma, or Nevada, but the water will be so polluted no one will want to swim there, and besides, what little gasoline is available is $50 a gallon. No one will be rolling eyes when the idea of eating a nice fresh green salad will be just a memory because fresh produce will be so scarce, when a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold. Not one of us will just be shaking our heads when the "thought police" come to arrest us for dreaming of the "old days."
No, no one will be laughing then.